Shortly after Sue Bird advocated for allowing anyone to compete as a woman in women’s sports, a couple of strange things happened. Graduating athletes from the NIT basketball tournament announced they had “transitioned” in order to be eligible for the WNBA draft. Every WNBA team seized the opportunity to snag talent that was previously out of their reach. Shockingly, viewership of WNBA tripled overnight as WNBA ratings soar.
Megan Rapinoe, famed lesbian women’s soccer player, was among the first to celebrate the unprecedented rise in WNBA popularity. “It’s about time that women got due recognition and equality in the sports arena,” she said. “With the allowance of trans women to perform in the WNBA, we will see competitive levels not previously achievable in the sport. And now that viewership is up, women in the sport may finally get the equal pay their male NBA counterparts enjoy.”
The National Invitational Tournament (NIT) is a men’s basketball tournament, operated by the NCAA. It is offered as a consolation prize to the 65th through 129th ranked men’s college basketball teams. As WNBA ratings soar, the evidence is clear that even the best of the worst men’s college ball players are still better than most elite WNBA athletes.